Left - Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' & R. 'The Alexandra Rose' 27 May 2023

My friend Alex Summers died in 2009. In 1967 he was a member of the US Pestemon Society. He was cranking out the newsletter with a mimeograph machine and suddenly thought, “I hate the smell of this and I don’t even like penstemons.” He quit, and a year later he founded the American Hosta Society.

Photograph by me

About 20 years ago the Perennial of the Year was Penstemon ‘Husker Red’. We had it in our garden and it has been long gone as well of my memory of what it looked like. Perhaps it has to do that the plants and trees that Rosemary and I had in our Kerrisdale garden had faces on them or interesting stories.

Just about every hosta in my garden has the face of the hybridizer or the person who introduced it. Roses are the same in evoking faces of friends or stories that surpass anything that I might have known about Husker Red.

Today is Saturday 27 May, 2023 and I am trying to keep my chin up in the shambles of a house that has holes in walls and in ceilings and most of my possessions have been taken for storage. I may be lucky if my house returns to what it was in the beginning of August.

Meanwhile I scan plants, deadhead my roses, walk Niño and try not to think too much of my Rosemary. It saddens me immensely to do so.

I was looking at my roses in the sun that we were not supposed to have and noticed that two English Roses related to the name of my daughter Alexandra were in bloom. One is R. ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ and the other is R. ‘The Alexandra Rose’.

Rosemary insisted in buying them because of the name and how it made us think of our Lillooet, BC daughter.

While that penstemon may have gotten the short end of the stick in our garden I find it impossible in not thinking of Rosemary when I see her fave Camellia ‘Donation’ or just about ever rose that she taught me to love.

Yes the plants in my garden have her face and the face of many others dear to me. And all my hostas are all Alex Summers.

 Above is a photograph of my mother taken in 1951 in our Buenos Aires garden. My Kitsilano garden is much too small for me to grow a wisteria (glicina in Argentine Spanish) but when I see it growing in Vancouver gardens they are all my mother. Could it be that the face of a plant makes it the person, too?

Rosa 'La Belle Sultane' 27 May 2023

Ancillary to the concept that if a tree falls in the garden and nobody is around to hear it, did it really happen?  I wonder if Leonardo ever got feedback on his Gioconda? Did he paint it in artistic isolation?

The pleasure in tending to a garden is the sharing of it. From 1986 Rosemary and I shared our garden with each other, with our visiting granddaughters (before they became teenagers), and the busloads of Americans that came from the US to see our corner Kerrisdale garden.

We always opened our garden for a weekend of visits from the members of the Vancouver Rose Society. For days before, we removed unsightly yellow or black spot leaves. The lawn was perfect. There was not a weed to be seen anywhere.

When we moved to our Kitsilano home we kept the tradition of opening our garden to the VRS in mid-June.

Right now almost at the end of May my garden is a riot of open rose shrubs (I hate to use the word bush) and Rosemary would be worried as to what roses would be in bloom in June for the open garden. I am not in the least worried. The odd roses that will be open will be side by side by my splendid hostas and the perennials that Rosemary instructed me to buy every year.

But there is one feeling of grief as I preen the garden. I cannot share its beauty with my Rosemary. The three neighbouring duplexes have never shown interest in the garden. In fact one offensive couple have complained that my Rosa ‘Complicata’( very large and overlooking the back lane) makes is difficult (really?) for them to put stuff in their garbage bins. One of them said to me, “It is not our fault that you want to have a garden.”

My cats love to be in the garden but the only feedback I get from Niño and Niña is their comfort in being in it and enjoying the sun under one of the metal benches.

Only Rosemary would understand the concept of Cruel to Be Kind. This was a lovely song composed by Brit rocker Nick Lowe. I tell people who may be interested that the song is in my head when I prune roses. If they are to bloom and have healthy canes one has to be brutal. 

Nick Lowe 

Nick Lowe at the Commodore Ballroom

One of my favourite rose scans from the summer 2001 was that of Rosa ‘Jacqueline du Pré’. She did not bloom last year because she was surrounded by an overly aggressive Gallica Rose, Rosa ‘La Belle Sultane’. Today (27 May but I am placing the blog on the 26th as I try to fill my blog holes) I decided to be cruel to be kind by removing with my secateurs many branches with buds that were about to open. Why? I wanted light to reach Jacqueline du Pré.

I hope that she does bloom in June. I know full well that Rosemary would have agreed to my cruelty.

Rosa 'Jacqueline du Pré' 6 June 2022

 

Rosa 'La Belle Sultane' & Hosta 'Neptune' 24 May 2023

Rosa 'Abraham Darby' (6 inches wide!) & Hosta 'Robert Frost' 27 May 2023

Rosa 'Charles de Mills' & Hosta 'Designer Genes' 26 May 2023

When incidents happen that are important in my life I remember the aphorisms and advice that my Valencia educated grandmother would give me. Little did I know then that many were the advice Sancho Panza gave to his knight boss.

One of them comes to mind especially in this century where knowledge is dissipating quickly.

Back in the 20^th I was no better, and my lack of curiousity for some of the fine points of literature was in effect.

In 1962 I was going to an American university, Mexico City College, in Mexico City. In an American Literature class our professor was whit-haired and he even looked like his good friend Robert Frost who had died the year before. I remember that I sat in the back row completely bored and with no curiousity to ask the man about his moments with the poet.

In the hosta kingdom of over 15,000 registered specimens there are only two named after poets. I have Hosta ‘Robert Frost’. As soon as I became most interested in Emily Dickinson, Hosta ‘Emily Dickinson’ was no longer available in the Vancouver and BC nurseries. Alas!

My hosta Robert Frost is an old introduction from at least 28 years ago and its variegation is staid. One of the reasons is that I have it in deep shade. With more sun it could become more exciting.

On the other hand just like I wrote about the human face of plants and how I connect them to people I know or the history of humans behind them, Hosta ‘Robert Frost’ made me look for a poem that I could associate with hostas. I hit paydirt! There is a host in my garden that is astoundingly gold (yellow) as it emerges in May. It is now huge. But it is viridescent which means as the season progresses it becomes green.

Nothing Gold Can Stay - Robert Frost

 Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

 

Scanned negative

Because my Kits home flooded from top to bottom I am living and sharing a hell with Niño and Niña. After more than a week with noisy “dehuminizers” (what I call dehumidifiers) they are tearing walls, removing floors and carpets not to mention perhaps tomorrow go at the ceilings. Luckily my bedroom and bathroom are intact and the three of us have that blessing when we close the doors.  Another refuge is my oficina. Both cats follow me. It is quiet there.

I have a lot of time to try to distract myself in the garden, scanning roses and writing a few blogs. Today’s is a strange one.

I know that Keith Richards was born December 18, 1943 and that President Joe Biden on November 20, 1942. It means that since I was born August 31, 1942, I am older that the man everybody is waiting to die so that they can be first with their social media R.I.P. At the same time, folks are opining that Biden is becoming senile. What path awaits me?

My scanned vintage print (Ilford Ilfospeed)

 

And of course Tina Turner died today and she was 83.

Her death made me reflect on a subject that is ancillary to all the above.

I photographed Tina Turner performing at the Commodore on March 1983. I believe that it may have been one of the last times when Les Wiseman’s In One Ear, Vancouver Magazine column featured a concert photograph.We both agreed that pictures of rock singers with their mikes while performing, lacked all personal style. By 1983 his column had great credibility and Vancouver Magazine was the best magazine around. The then powerful record reps gave us access to their stars either at their hotel rooms or backstage.

Throughout my photographic career I have always attempted to go my way and to test boundaries.

Shooting Tina Turner with a film camera did not have the convenience of the instant result of today’s digital cameras. You did have to know what you were doing. One of my methods was to use slower shutter speeds to unfreeze motion. I also used a very slow very sharp film called Kodak Technical Film. No lab processed so I took care of it in my darkroom.

It is interesting to compare my darkroom print which was in my Tina Turner file with a scan of the negative that I did today. As my friend custom printer Trevor Martin told me,”Your German Schneider Componon enlarging lens was sharp but it simply cannot compete with your Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner.

Gary Cramer & the Works - circa 1979-80

With all the recent talk about artificial intelligence I believe that many forget how good search engines have become since Altavista paved the way so many years ago.

I am trying fill holes in my blog so I think of easy ones that I can do in a jiffy. This one is about my beginner’s luck. I put luck, Emily Dickinson into Google and found:

Luck is not chance- Emily Dickinson

Luck is not chance—

It's Toil—

Fortune's expensive smile

Is earned—

The Father of the Mine

Is that old-fashioned Coin

We spurned—

My Rosemary, our two daughters and I arrived to Vancouver from Mexico City in our VW bug. By 1977 I was shooting for magazines and in particular for Malcolm Parry and Rick Staehling’s Vancouver Magazine. I was soon seconded to work with Les Wiseman who had a column on rock & roll called In One Ear. I was dispatched to photograph bands. I was completely ignorant on the topic. The first band I ever photographed was Gary Cramer & the Works. Somehow  got it all right and it is one of my fave band shots. It is not too studied and the folks in the picture appear likeable and unpretentious (this they were).

 My second band shot was of Art Bergmann and the Young Canadians. In neither of these two photographs did I use what was to become my trademark – lighting.

Young Canadians - Circa 80/81

Perhaps one of the reasons for my good luck is that Les Wiseman had an innate elegant way of telling me about the bands I was to photograph. He was low key but to use the lingo of the time , “right on”. 

In the summer of 2001 I was bored. I went to my garden and cut a couple of Rosa 'Reine Victoria' roses. I put them on my scanner using a bamboo stick attached to anArt Deco lamp. The scan was beautiful. I saw the possibilities so I made sure my scan was at 100% the size of the rose, that the colour was accurate and I wrote down the date.

Rosa 'Reine Victoria' Summer of 2001

I was not to know that by today in May 2023 I may have over 3000 of these "scanographs". Particularly now I am busy having fun (and fun it is) arranging the roses and their leaves on my Epson V700 flatbed scanner. Walking Niño mid afternoon and scanning the plants gives me a sense of purpose and a small distraction to avoid my grief over having lost my Rosemary two and a half years ago. 

While I cannot credit Les Wiseman for my beginner's luck with scanning roses give all the credit to Rosemary who gently pulled me into appreciating gardening and learning to love all the snobbish plants she so liked.